Treating opinions as crimes?
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) May 3, 2024
Has Congress lost their minds? pic.twitter.com/qUU1iqKAIn
Friday, May 3, 2024
Opinions are not crimes
When the USDA's own data shows that the average return to feeding cattle in America is a negative $24 per head per month for the past 23 years.
our sister industry the hog industry, for example, four decades ago, there were over 600,000 independent hog producers scattered all across America. Today, we've wiped out 9 out of every 10 of them. Now we're down to 60,000. And so there's an industry that is now vertically integrated. So vertically integrated means? This means that the meat packer owns the entire supply chain for the product. So he owns where they grow the hogs, where they butcher the hogs, where they sell the hogs, all the way up to the retailer.
American Farmers Are “Reaching The Point Of No Return” Due To US Gov Allowing Foreign Countries To Own Our Meat Industries They’re averaging negative $24 per head & will soon be OUT OF BUSINESS “The largest pork producer in the United States of America is Chinese-owned.American Farmers Are “Reaching The Point Of No Return” Due To US Gov Allowing Foreign Countries To Own Our Meat Industries
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 4, 2024
They’re averaging negative $24 per head & will soon be OUT OF BUSINESS
“The largest pork producer in the United States of America is Chinese owned
- We're… pic.twitter.com/TomZgXRdcG
We're paying to fight ourselves.
We’re paying to destroy our own industry,
When the USDA's own data shows that the average return to feeding cattle in America is a negative $24 per head per month for the past 23 years. We're reaching the point of no return. Yes. When it's game over.
We're at a tough point because we're losing so many small farms and ranchers and yet we have to change it back even if we were to start today and go we could change anything we wanted overnight and change these rules to apply back competition it's going to take a lot of time and money and effort to change the industry back to where it's competitive and works a little bit more even playing field isn't it?
We're reaching the point of no return when it's game over and if you look at our sister industry the hog industry for example four decades ago there were
Over 600,000 independent hog producers scattered all across America. Today, we've wiped out nine out of every 10 of them. Now we're down to 60,000. And so there's an industry that is now vertically integrated. So vertically integrated means? This means that the meat packer owns the entire supply chain for the product. So he owns where they grow the hogs, where they butcher the hogs, where they sell the hogs, all the way up to the retailer.
And the largest pork producer in the United States of America is Chinese-owned, Smith Field Farms.
Which should be alarming to consumers as well. It should be alarming, yes. We're not going to reverse that hog industry because it has become so vertically integrated and concentrated and controlled. But what we can do is prevent that from happening to the cattle industry.”
THE UKRAINE: A 10-year fight between George Soros and Vladimir Putin?
George Soros’s financial empire is built on foreign investments secured by drafting off the Blob’s maximalist war & intervention policies. Trump’s détente w/ Eurasia threatened to crumble Soros’s financial empire.
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) May 3, 2024
That’s why it matters that all the prosecutors are Soros-funded. https://t.co/dDGIQylx2Q pic.twitter.com/H4U25pvd1L
“I’m on Social Security, 68 years old, and working just to pay my taxes. My property taxes were $895 a year. Now, my property taxes are approaching $8,000 a year over . . ."
If You Live In America, Stop Scrolling & Listen To This Because Unless Things Change, This Will Be You One Day
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 3, 2024
“I’m on Social Security, 68 years old, and working just to pay my taxes. My property taxes were $895 a year. Now, my property taxes are approaching $8,000 a year over… pic.twitter.com/x7t9d28Z7X
The UK Will Deport Migrants to Rwanda
The European Union is making it extremely difficult for the UK to free itself of taxpayer-subsidized residents. Migrants in the UK are now fleeing to neighboring Ireland, where they are under the control of the EU courts and cannot forcibly remove migrants. --Martin Armstrong
Thank you to Jerri Lynn Ward. And to Martin Armstrong @ Armstrong Economics.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak finally has the power to bypass the European Union courts and tackle the UK’s migrant crisis. About 1,843 illegal immigrants crossed into the UK in 2019, but that number quickly multiplied to 28,526 in 2021. It is believed that the UK was forced to admit an astounding 60,000 undocumented illegal immigrants in 2022. These numbers are completely unsustainable economically. Sunak has finally passed a bill to deport a fragment of these illegal residents to Rwanda.
Now Rwanda is receiving 370 million pounds over the next five years for permitting a fraction of the UK’s refugees to relocate there. At the moment, the UK is only expected to deport 5,700 illegal migrants to Rwanda – which may sound like a grand number but is insignificant compared to how many have found their way onshore. Home Office Health Secretary
Victoria Atkins admitted that many of the cohorts have stopped reporting and will need to be tracked down. The government would like the first wave of flights to begin in as little as 10 weeks.
The European Union is making it extremely difficult for the UK to free itself of taxpayer-subsidized residents. Migrants in the UK are now fleeing to neighboring Ireland, where they are under the control of the EU courts and cannot forcibly remove migrants.
Here is your looming civil war.
Micheal Martin, the Irish deputy prime minister, has blamed the Rwanda policy for a recent uptick in unwanted residents. How bad is the issue? Nearly 80% of recent migrants to Dublin have crossed over from the UK. Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris is asking the European Union for permission to deport them back to the UK.
“We’re not, I’m not interested in [returned migrants]. We’re not going to accept returns from the EU via Ireland when the EU doesn’t accept returns back to France where illegal migrants are coming from,” Sunak stated, later adding, “I’m focused squarely on getting our Rwanda scheme up and running. I want the deterrent which will say that if you come to our country illegally, you will not be able to stay and you will be removed either to your own country if it’s safe or Rwanda.”
Chris Heaton-Harris, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, correctly explained that in order for Ireland to conduct a massive deportation operation, the EU courts would be required to allow ALL EU nations to deport illegal migrants. “If this legislation is, as I believe it is and I’ve been assured it is, just setting us back in time to where we were and what we were dealing with, then I’m comfortable with that,” Heaton-Harris said. “But we are fully behind implementing our Rwanda scheme.”
Why should the UK be forced to negotiate with the unelected officials in Brussels regarding domestic matters? Ireland should place blame on Brussels for permitting open border policies that have threatened the entire bloc’s national security. Brexit has been This is yet another reason why the creation of the European Union has been an utter failure. Independent nations are no longer independent. They cannot base their policies on their own nation’s best interests and instead are forced to bend to the wills of Brussels.
DONALD TRUMP CALLS FOR THE DEATH PENALTY FOR ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS
⁉️If you still hate Donald Trump watch to his speech on antisemitism👇
— X News Release (@Mutunga22534150) May 4, 2024
You will begin to like him💯 pic.twitter.com/uol39PaOvo
Well, that was fast. Clint Russell's video was removed. But X News Release has it up.
In 2019, Trump signed an executive order to combat antisemitism, making clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the federal funding of universities and other institutions that engage in discrimination applies to institutions that "traffic in antisemitic hate."
FLASHBACK — DONALD TRUMP (2019):
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) May 3, 2024
“This is our message to universities: If you want to accept the tremendous amount of federal dollars that you get every year, you MUST reject antisemitism.”
This is the LEADERSHIP America NEEDS! pic.twitter.com/3KdFdIiCm6
In writing at least, some American senators [49 out of 100] claim to want to preserve national sovereignty over health decisions
This is BIG NEWS!!! Please share!
— MERYL NASS, MD (@NassMeryl) May 3, 2024
49 Senators (every Republican Senator) have told President Biden to withdraw US support for the Treaty and IHR amendments--but if the US does go forward, the treaty(s) will have to be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent,… pic.twitter.com/KHGdnG83A5
Organ meats are Nature's true multivitamin. No supplement can match them
What happened on 911 coverup signifies an absence of democratic, transparent, and accountable government. Establishing the truth is, in part, about restoring honesty, trust, and confidence in the American political system
[RG911Team] There is a reason the New York Times ignored this emotional 9/11 press conference from a local fire commissioner.
— Richard Gage, AIA, Architect (@RichardGage_911) May 3, 2024
He said the quiet part out loud.
How many other firefighters are secretly in solidarity with him? pic.twitter.com/ovPhZ5H4w6
00:00. My name is Christopher Gioia and I'm a fire commissioner with the Franklin Square Munson Fire District in the town of Franklin Square New York, Nassau County, which is near the Queens border. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was working on the Brooklyn side of the East River just north of the Williamsburg Bridge and had a spectacular view of Manhattan and the Twin Towers. Having been an eyewitness to the attacks that day and from being called to duty to assist the fire department of New York and the following days and weeks afterward, 9/11 has never been far from my thoughts having been burned forever into my soul. The 9/11 Commission concluded that Osama bin Laden and a group of Islamic extremists were responsible and carried out the attacks and that was to be the end of it. Truth be told, that is far from the end of it. The 9/11 Commission was flawed and in the words of two of its own, the Chairman and the Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, respectively, Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton, stated in their book, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 911 Commission, 2006, that they were "set up to fail" and were "starved of funds to do a proper investigation." And that's their own words. They also confirmed that they were denied access to the truth and misled by senior officials in the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Authority and that this obstruction and deception led them to contemplate slapping officials with criminal charges. The final report did not examine key evidence and neglected serious anomalies and various accounts of what happened. The commissioners themselves admit their report was "incomplete and flawed" and that many questions about the terror attacks remain unanswered.
Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission was swiftly closed on August 21st, 2004. Architects and Engineers from 911 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, and the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, to name a few, raise valid and important questions that were never even considered, let alone answered by the official investigation. The bottom line here is that the American public has not been told the complete truth about the events of that fateful autumn morning 18 years ago. What happened on 9/11 is fundamentally important but equally important is the way that 9/11 cover up the signifies an absence of democratic transparent and accountable government establishing the truth is in part about restoring honesty and trust and confidence in the American political system.
3:15. That is why on July 24th of this year the Franklin Square Munson Fire District voted unanimously to adopt a legal resolution of support for the Special Federal Grand Jury investigation before the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
3:35. The almost 3,000 innocent people
QUINONES: Lack of engagement on your part to an incompetent government hurts them more than a hopeless revolution would.
As the days pass, it's hard to deny that it looks like what this occupied government desires is that the Right would react to their pronouncements with violence.
— Peter R. Quiñones (@PeterRQuinones) May 2, 2024
What they seem to not understand is that they're just creating more apathy.
Lack of engagement on your part to an…
As the days pass, it's hard to deny that it looks like what this occupied government desires is that the Right would react to their pronouncements with violence.
What they seem to not understand is that they're just creating more apathy. Lack of engagement on your part to an incompetent government hurts them more than a hopeless revolution would.Jared Bernstein is an American economist who is the chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers. He has absolutely no idea how money works.
Jared Bernstein is an American economist who is the chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers. He has absolutely no idea how money works. None. This clip is precious. (The answer, BTW, is then we would know how fucked up it is.) https://t.co/rg7zOaOFBB
— Dave Collum (@DavidBCollum) May 3, 2024
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Are organ meats the true health food?
The steak guide!! pic.twitter.com/i6z1DUCoCt
— Dr Shawn Baker 🥩 (@SBakerMD) May 3, 2024
Organ meats are the true health food, particularly liver.
Is beef liver better than a multivitamin?
— Heart & Soil Supplements (@heartandsoilHQ) April 5, 2024
It’s easy to tell when your gut bacteria are doing the work, instead of your digestive enzymes: you pass wind. 10 foods that rot in your colon
Contrary to popular belief!! pic.twitter.com/W9CByOA0Lk
— Dr Shawn Baker 🥩 (@SBakerMD) May 2, 2024
Here is a list of those 10 ten foods. Brussel sprouts? I love Brussels sprouts.
Contrary to popular belief it’s not actually meat that rots in the colon but instead beans, grains, and vegetables. The function of digestion is to break food down as far as possible which can then be absorbed through the intestinal wall and used by our bodies.
On average, a meal takes 4-5 hours to completely leave the stomach. The surface of the small intestine absorbs anything that our enzymes have broken down into sufficiently small components.
Our gut bacteria go to work and digest some of the remainder, sometimes producing waste products that we can absorb. The remaining indigestible plant matter 'fiber’ and other waste emerge as feces.
The primary reason we need our gut bacteria is to digest the sugars, starches, and fiber found in grains, beans, and vegetables that our digestive enzymes can’t break down.
It’s easy to tell when your gut bacteria are doing the work, instead of your digestive enzymes: you pass wind. That is why beans and starches make you pass wind, but meat doesn’t. The vegetables, beans, and grains are rotting in your colon with the decomposition material including methane and carbon dioxide gases.
The Fed screwed up so bad JP Morgan’s now warning we could see 8% rates. 8% at these current prices?
The Fed screwed up so bad JP Morgan’s now warning we could see 8% rates.
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) May 2, 2024
That would choke out housing and commercial real estate. And it could destroy the banking system considering last year’s crashes came after just a 2 point move in the ten-year. This would be double that.… https://t.co/AaZj89JIIf
On 9/11 Deena Burnett received multiple phone calls from her husband Tom Burnett on United Flight 93. But "cell phone calls could not be made from 35,000 feet"
On 9/11 Deena Burnett received multiple phone calls from her husband Tom Burnett on United Flight 93. She reported to the FBI that same day that the caller ID showed his cell number on all of the calls except one.
— International Center for 9/11 Justice (@ic911justice) April 30, 2024
The only problem is the plane was at 35,000 to 40,000 feet when… pic.twitter.com/4VOZ7IBv7M
On 9/11 Deena Burnett received multiple phone calls from her husband Tom Burnett on United Flight 93. She reported to the FBI that same day that the caller ID showed his cell number on all calls except one. The only problem is the plane was at 35,000 to 40,000 feet when two of the calls were made. Apparently recognizing that cell phone calls could not be made from 35,000 feet, the FBI now claims, without evidence, that these calls were made from a seat-back phone. But then why did his number display on the caller ID? Clearly, somebody — most probably the FBI — is lying. So where were these calls made from? Clearly not from 35,000 feet in the air. ic911.org/consensus-pane
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
The Antisemitism Awareness Act will ban accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than their own nation. Ban claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel. Ban making claims about Jews controlling the government.
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗩𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗜𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) May 2, 2024
The Antisemitism Awareness Act, which passed the House today, will cause the Gospel to meet the definition of antisemitism.
The following speech will be banned:
- Accusing Jewish… pic.twitter.com/ERrB4mPWi1
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗩𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗜𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵
The Antisemitism Awareness Act, which passed the House today, will cause the Gospel to meet the definition of antisemitism. The following speech will be banned: - Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than their own nation. - Claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel. - Making claims about Jews controlling the government. Imagine not being able to link Mossad to Jeffrey Epstein or Ghisaline Maxwell anymore? The implication of this bill would mean more censorship here on X, since Elon would claim he has to follow the law and suspend accounts critical of Israel. The entire point of those college protests was to strip away your constitutional rights of free speech and assembly. Today is also the first day of Jewish American Heritage Month. The Prime Minister of Israel has already bragged about creating and promoting laws in the US to censor critics. Will Elon Musk fight this bill with as much energy as he fought for freedom of speech in Brazil and other countries?The purpose of Zionism is to ignite war among the three Abrahamic religions to usher in a one world religion?
Religious Mind Control and the Impending Holy War
— Greg Reese (@gregreese) May 2, 2024
This report was originally published last November. The purpose of Zionism is to ignite war among the three Abrahamic religions to usher in a one world religion. And it seems to be working on many. pic.twitter.com/lxXYK6aSO8
TEDROS WILL SAY: well, in our pandemic treaty, it doesn't say you can mandate vaccines, it doesn't say we can lock you down,' well no, it doesn't say [that] in the treaty, it says it in the [IHR] amendments.
"Tedros, the Director-General of WHO, will say, 'Oh, well, in our pandemic treaty, it doesn't say you can mandate vaccines, it doesn't say we can lock you down,' well no, it doesn't say [that] in the treaty, it says it in the [IHR] amendments. And so he lies by omission..."… pic.twitter.com/WER7rxlv0M
— Sense Receptor (@SenseReceptor) May 2, 2024
[RG911Team] There [was] thousands of tons of 9/11 evidence that the US government didn’t even want their handpicked, cowardly “experts” to see
[RG911Team] There are thousands of tons of 9/11 evidence that the US government didn’t even want their handpicked, cowardly “experts” to see.
— Richard Gage, AIA, Architect (@RichardGage_911) May 2, 2024
Why? pic.twitter.com/btetxRNrs9
Is this a Klaus Schwab Top Ramen?
Better check those ramen noodles... pic.twitter.com/6EeywDv476
— DR JANE RUBY (@RealDrJaneRuby) May 2, 2024
Are Christian conservatives about to figure out that the current Netanyahu-run government does not actually like them?
HR 6090 bill would officially define "Antisemitism" so the federal government can sue, prosecute, or sanction more people, businesses, and universities for supposed violations of civil rights law. --Charlie Kirk
Are Christian conservatives about to figure out that the current Netanyahu-run government does not actually like them? https://t.co/cyjFb4viWT
— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) May 1, 2024
In response to campus anti-Israel protests, the House is rushing to to vote on a new bill, HR 6090. This new bill would officially define "Antisemitism" so the federal government can sue, prosecute, or sanction more people, businesses, and universities for supposed violations of civil rights law.
This bill would make it illegal to compare Israeli policies to Nazi policies. It would make it illegal to describe Israel as racist. It would make it illegal to accuse an American citizen of being more loyal to Israel than to the United States.
But I stand with @RepThomasMassie: This bill is an affront to the Constitution and must not pass.
Where do you think all of the anti-Christian hate in the U.S. and around the world comes from? It's not the Muslim world. Nor is it the Arab world.
When I worked at UPS in the 1980s, I delivered to retail businesses on Wilshire between San Vicente and Fairfax. In the afternoon on my route for pick-ups in the area, there were often bomb threats with a couple dozen employees standing on the sidewalk milling about. This was not rare. It seemed almost weekly to me that at one building or another just east of San Vicente a bomb threat had been declared as evidenced by the crowds on the sidewalk having recently emptied the building. The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles was located on the north side of Wilshire, and I used to pick up from their office there. It was on the 3rd, 4th or 6th floor. Can't recall. But their office had a woman stationed behind bulletproof glass. I didn't tap on it to check; it could have been plexiglass for all I knew. And the sight of it alarmed me to dangers that I certainly was not alert to. But no bomb was ever detonated. No one was ever harmed. Traffic was inconvenienced. Commerce came to a crawl for about 30 minutes before everybody was ordered to return to their offices. In retrospect, was the bulletproof glass necessary? I don't know. I never heard of anyone going into their offices to shoot up the joint. Were the bomb threats real? Who knows? The frequency of them seemed almost to send a message that the Jewish people were the persecuted tribe of Israel? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it's just the reverse. Maybe.
DR. ROBERT MALONE was busy in 2020 writing COVID guidebooks and faking science with famotidine for $21M for DARPA. The OTA contracts for COVID countermeasures were issued by the DOD for about $50B back then.
Dear Dr. Malone..., by @sasha_latypova https://t.co/Oc0hDUm5p7
— St. Michael, the Archangel (@aveng_angel) May 1, 2024
Here is the direct link to Sasha Latypova's open letter to Dr. Robert Malone. It is so worth the read.
I never knew you were also an OTA expert! That’s good to know. It would have been even better to know this right around 2020 when you were busy writing COVID guidebooks and faking science with famotidine for $21M for DARPA. The OTA contracts for COVID countermeasures were issued by the DOD for about $50B back then. It would have been great to have you utter some mention of it on Joe Rogan’s or Dark Horse podcast or some other high-profile social media venue to mislead Americans who all thought they were getting safe regulated pharmaceutical products and not unregulated, dangerous, liability-free EUA military countermeasures. Why didn’t you say anything back then? Why didn’t you say anything in the January 16 Doc Malik interview to disprove what I said about the OTA/COVID contracts? What evidence of OTA expertise can you offer other than an angry assertion that you have it? Why did you wait to claim you have expertise in this topic until non-OTA-experts,
Katherine Watt and I found and reviewed the relevant law and the contracts, and until Debbie Lerman, a journalist and not previously an OTA expert, figured out why and how HHS “partnered” with the DOD to circumvent their respective OTA restrictions? Turns out that was necessary to order a massive volume of “prototypes and demonstrations” (unregulated chemical poison) and pretend these were regulated medicines for military and civilians. Did you know this in 2020?
Here is the chart that shows that the DoD was in charge of Operation Warp Speed, or OWS. At the right, it reads, "In charge: NSC, DOD, BARDA."
And here is a pic of General Gustave Perna, the Chief Operating Officer of OWS. We may want to ask ourselves, how do we allow ourselves to be ruled by idiots?
CLEAN-CUT COMEY, WAR CRIMINAL? On the tortured that Comey approved: waterboarding, the kind that the Japanese used against U.S. soldiers in WWII, and detainees [could have their heads] thrown against a wall up to 30 times
Every branch of government will institute some new rule, new law, or new policy under falsely declared emergencies, in other words, hoaxes, and justify their fascistic actions under that emergency, whether it's COVID, whether America was attacked on 9/11 by outside or domestic forces, or with domestic complicity, whether it incited, declared, and an engaged in a war on terror, they will use emergency powers to seize more government and mass murder. For it needs a trauma to sell the "moral" justification for expansion This is not conjecture. This is not conspiracy. This is not hyperbole. Nor is it hypothetical. The pattern is clear. And if we survive their horrors and read the details of what they pulled to get that power, it only sickens us that they still are walking unshackled.
From James Bovard,
Former FBI chief James Comey compares his courage to Martin Luther - "Here I stand - I can do no other." But Comey saved the Bush-era torture regime & personally approved barbaric interrogation methods including waterboarding & wall slamming. He complains in his memoir that he "lost sleep" over Bush interrogation policies - but that wasn't an option for detainees, since Comey approved forcibly depriving them of sleep for 180 hours straight. https://mises.org/.../james-comey%E2%80%99s-forgotten...
Clean-cut Comey is a war criminal.
“Here I stand, I can do no other,” James Comey told President George W. Bush in 2004 when Bush pressured Comey - who was then Deputy Attorney General - to approve an unlawful antiterrorist policy. Comey, who was FBI chief from 2013 to 2017, was quoting a line reputedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521 when he told Holy Roman Emperor Charles V that he would not recant his sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church. Comey’s quotation of himself quoting the father of the Reformation is par for the self-reverence of his new memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.
The apologies and praise for Comey come from the usual morally depraved stooges in the media. This time, it's Chris Matthews,
MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently declared, “James Comey made his bones by standing up against torture. He was a made man before Trump came along.” Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, in a column declaring that Americans should be “deeply grateful” to lawyers like Comey, declared, “The Bush administration wanted to claim that its ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were lawful. Comey believed they were not... So Comey pushed back as much as he could.”
Comey approved torture but fretted over their optics.
Martin Luther risked death to fight against what he considered the heresies of his time. Comey, a top Bush administration policymaker, found a safer way to oppose the worldwide secret U.S. torture regime widely considered a heresy against American values. Comey approved brutal practices and then wrote some memos and emails fretting about the optics.
Even after the horrific images of Abu Ghraib were leaked, Comey failed to stop the torture. Bovard explains that "Rather than ending the abuses, Comey repudiated the memo." Right, right. That's the problem--the leaked memo. That's where the real terrorist threat exists, right, James, and not the murderous Bush policies that you approved and unleashed.
Comey became Deputy Attorney General in late 2003 and “had oversight of the legal justification used to authorize” key Bush programs in the war on terror. At that time, the Bush White House was pushing the Justice Department to again sign off on an array of extreme practices that had begun shortly after the 9/11 attacks. A 2002 Justice Department memo had leaked out that declared that the president was entitled to ignore federal law in approving extreme interrogation techniques. Photos had also leaked from Abu Ghraib prison showing the stacking of naked prisoners with bags over their heads, mock electrocution via a wire connected to a man’s penis, guard dogs on the verge of ripping into naked men, and grinning U.S. male and female soldiers celebrating the bloody degradation. A confidential CIA Inspector General report had just warned that post-9/11 CIA interrogation methods may violate the International Convention Against Torture.
Rather than ending the abuses, Comey repudiated the memo. Speaking to the media in a not-for-attribution session on June 22, 2004, Comey declared that the 2002 memo was “overbroad,” “abstract academic theory,” and “legally unnecessary.” Comey helped oversee crafting a new memo with different legal footing to justify the same interrogation methods.
What depraved ghouls occupy the federal positions. As to waterboarding which sought to break detainees with waterboarding, or near-drowning, Comey greenlighted that.
Comey twice gave explicit approval for waterboarding, which sought to break detainees with near-drowning. This practice had been recognized as a war crime by the U.S. government since the Spanish-American War.
But Comey claims he was losing sleep over Bush's torture policies. Maybe. But it seems quite ironic that those same policies refused to allow prisoners to get any sleep at all, using torture to keep them awake for 180 hours straight. Let's see, how many days is that? 7.5 days.
Comey wrote in his memoir that he was losing sleep over concern about Bush administration torture policies. But losing sleep was not an option for detainees because Comey approved sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique. Detainees could be forcibly kept awake for up to 180 hours until they confessed their sins. How did this work? At Abu Ghraib, the notorious Iraqi prison, one FBI agent reported seeing a detainee “handcuffed to a railing with a nylon sack on his head and a shower curtain draped around him, being slapped by a soldier to keep him awake.”
But Comey had options. If the optics for waterboarding were untenable, why he also had available to him wall slamming, where detainees were thrown up against a wall 30 times. Was this before or after sleep deprivation? But I think Americans were too busy watching
Comey also approved “wall slamming" --which, as law professor David Cole wrote, meant that detainees could be thrown against a wall up to 30 times. Comey also signed off on the CIA using “interrogation” methods such as facial slaps, locking detainees in small boxes for 18 hours, and forced nudity. When the secret Comey memo approving those methods finally became public in 2009, many Americans were aghast - and relieved that the Obama administration had repudiated Bush policies.
Yes, the Obama administration repudiated Bush policies, but he failed to prosecute anyone for the crimes listed in the report. Same as it ever was . . . .
By the way, that "wall slamming" means slamming a detainee's head against a wall. Nice. Nice, nice. A quick aside, David Cole writes that
The memos’ matter-of-fact clinical descriptions belie the harsh tactics to which they gave a green light. They set the C.I.A. loose to slam suspects’ heads into walls up to 30 times in a row, to deprive suspects of sleep for more than a week straight, to confine them to small dark boxes for hours at a time, to slap them repeatedly in the face and abdomen, and to suffocate them with water to induce the perception that they are drowning.
As to waterboarding, that's what the Japanese did to American soldiers during WWII,
The United States itself treated waterboarding as torture when the Japanese used it against our troops in World War II. Yet through pages and pages of dense legal reasoning, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers somehow reach the conclusion that these tactics, even when employed in combination and over a 30-day period, are not torture, and not even cruel, inhuman, or degrading.
Ah, you've got to love official spin by the admin.
Back to Comey.
When it came to opposing torture, Comey’s version of “Here I Stand” had more loopholes than a reverse mortgage contract. Though Comey in 2005 approved each of 13 controversial extreme interrogation methods, he objected to combining multiple methods on one detainee. It was as if Martin Luther grudgingly approved of the Catholic Church selling indulgences to individually expunge sins for adultery, robbery, lying, and gluttony but vehemently objected if all the sins were expunged in one lump sum payment.
10 years later, a report is finally released. Ah, a report! That's excellent! That means proof of the criminals including the chain of custody from who approved it, funded it, staffed it, and committed the heinous acts of torture, right? Ah, not so fast there, Sparky. Government actors have immunity in almost every government atrocity. What's sickening, but not surprising, to learn is that "Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of prisoners." And the only CIA official to go to prison for the torture in Iraq at Abu Ghraib was the guy who outed the program, whistleblower John Kiriakou.
In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a massive report, Americans learned grisly details of the CIA torture regime that Comey helped legally sanctify - including death via hypothermia, rape-like rectal feeding of detainees, compelling detainees to stand long periods on broken legs, and dozens of cases of innocent people pointlessly brutalized. Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of prisoners. The only CIA official to go to prison for the torture scandal was courageous whistleblower John Kiriakou.
Comey did nothing to prevent the torture. He approved it.
If Comey had resigned in 2004 or 2005 to protest the torture techniques he now claims to abhor, he would deserve some of the praise he is now receiving. Instead, he remained in the Bush administration but wrote an email summarizing his objections, declaring that “it was my job to protect the department and the A.G. [Attorney General] and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong." A 2009 New York Times analysis noted that Comey and two colleagues “have largely escaped criticism [for approving torture] because they raised questions about interrogation and the law.” In Washington, writing emails is “close enough for government work” to convey sainthood.
Was Comey fired? Nope.
Was Comey forced into early retirement? Nope.
Was Comey demoted? Nope.
Did Comey suffer a loss in pay, fined, rendered unfit for office? No. No. And no.
Well, what happened to him? What usually happens to government employees when the public finds out about their atrocities? They get promoted.
When Comey finally exited the Justice Department in August 2005 to become a lavishly-paid senior vice president for Lockheed Martin, he proclaimed in a farewell speech that protecting the Justice Department’s “reservoir” of “trust and credibility” requires “vigilance” and “an unerring commitment to truth.” But Comey perpetuated policies that shattered the moral credibility of both the Justice Department and the U.S. government. Comey failed to heed another Martin Luther admonition: “You are not only responsible for what you say but also for what you do not say.”
Torture Memos, The by David Cole (2009-12-03) https://t.co/EFkC9Jb2rE via @amazon
— St. Michael, the Archangel (@aveng_angel) May 1, 2024
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)